


Flesh Into Blossom

by DoreyG



Category: Assassin's Creed - All Media Types
Genre: Developing Relationship, Established Relationship, Injury Recovery, Love Confessions, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-14
Updated: 2021-02-14
Packaged: 2021-03-14 07:21:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,313
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29292048
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DoreyG/pseuds/DoreyG
Summary: “You told them, huh?” He asked and, even though he most definitely should’ve known better, gave Stentor a teasing grin at his authoritative tone. “How autocratic of you. Were you my gatekeeper, all the time I was asleep?”
Relationships: Alexios/Stentor (Assassin's Creed)
Comments: 2
Kudos: 23
Collections: Chocolate Box - Round 6





	Flesh Into Blossom

**Author's Note:**

  * For [greygerbil](https://archiveofourown.org/users/greygerbil/gifts).



He woke up with a gasp in a tent he didn’t remember entering, a savage pain radiating through his stomach and a heavy weight pinning him down by the legs.

His immediate instinct was to struggle, but somehow he didn’t quite seem to have the energy. Instead he remained flat on his back for a long few moments, still gasping his way back to consciousness, and then slowly managed to prop himself up on his elbows with quite some effort. “What…?”

“Alexios!” And then he heard a familiar voice, and all of his worry faded away. Stentor shot up from where he’d been lying over his legs, as if he’d passed out in exactly that position. The man almost fell over entirely, but just about managed to catch himself on the edge of the bed at the very last moment. “You’re awake!”

“I think so? I don’t even remember going to sleep,” he confessed, and made a face as the pain chose that moment to start stabbing again. “What happened?”

Stentor settled down awkwardly besides the bed, reached out to gently push him back against the pillows. Usually he would’ve resisted, to tease Stentor if nothing else, but something about the expression on the man’s face had him relenting with a surprising amount of ease. “Do you remember the skirmish?”

 _Oh_. Well, when Stentor put it like that maybe his memory wasn’t altogether blank. He remembered the bandits, who had made camp surprisingly close to the centre of Sparta. He remembered gathering up Kassandra and Stentor, going out to drive them off before they actually started to cause trouble. He remembered diving into battle with them, Stentor giving a savage snarl behind him as Kassandra let out a gleeful laugh from in front…

“Yes?” He settled for, because that was the point where everything went dark.

“You went toe to toe with one of them,” Stentor said, and kept giving him that concerned glance. It was strange, to see him so obviously worried, when usually he was so obviously furious even when they were in bed together. “I’m not sure what happened, I was busy myself at the time, but you seemed to get distracted by something and he pressed his advantage. He stabbed you, right in the fucking stomach.”

“ _Ouch_ ,” he said, which seemed like somewhat of an understatement considering. “That explains why it hurts so much, I guess.”

“Indeed,” Stentor said, and smiled for perhaps half a second. The man was even more solemn than usual, and it was deeply worrying. “Luckily Kassandra managed to get over just in time, and stop him from following up his blow. Once I was done with the man I was fighting I joined her, and we both dragged you out of there and to safety. But it was close.”

“How close?” He asked, gorily fascinated.

But Stentor didn’t answer. Stentor only drew in a deep breath, and stared at him silently. He had seen that look on his face only once or twice before, usually only in the fleeting moments between fucking and falling asleep together when the other man thought he was too tired to notice.

“Right,” he said, genuinely not sure what to do with that look. He wanted to reassure him that it’d all be alright, but somehow he wasn’t quite sure how to. “How long have I been out?”

“Four days, six-” Stentor ground to a somewhat confusing halt, seemed to gather himself for a moment before he continued. “About half a week, give or take a day or so.”

“Huh,” he said, which wasn’t especially profound but did seem rather apt. He’d never slept that long before, had generally been laughing and walking again in what felt like the blink of an eye. “What about my injuries, how are they looking?”

“You only really had one, the stab to your stomach,” Stentor said, for some reason looking somewhat relieved at the change in direction. “But that was pretty nasty. Everybody who’s had a look at you, everybody professional that is, says that you’re healing well all things considered. You may need to take it easier than usual for a while, though.”

“No climbing up buildings, then?” He asked, with a customarily mischievous grin.

“ _Alexios_.” Stentor looked actively furious for a moment, before he just about managed to flatten his expression out to something far more neutral. It wasn’t as if he was unused to riling Stentor up, he still managed it fairly often after a year of them fucking in every spare moment, but he still found himself startled. “I thought you were going to die.”

“But I’m not,” he pointed out, baffled by how much genuine emotion lurked there. He knew that Stentor was capable of more feelings than blind rage, it was hard not to after so long attempting to coax reluctant smiles from him, but he still somehow had never expected anything like this. “Am I?”

Stentor snorted, and rolled his eyes. A return of the familiar, at last, but still one that left him strangely unsettled. “Not for now, it seems.”

“Well, that’s good,” he said, attempting to make his voice deliberately soothing. It was hard, he’d always thought himself fairly good with people but Stentor was a different proposition altogether. “Does everybody know what happened?”

“Kassandra was there, obviously,” Stentor said, knowing exactly what he meant. “And she soon went to find Pater and Myrrine, who both came here with all due haste. They’ve all been fretting over you for the past few days, although Kassandra seems to have been taking out most of her worry on the local wildlife.”

That sounded like his violent little sister. He was grinning when he asked his next question. “Where are they now?”

“Sleeping,” Stentor said, and it said a lot for his current state of mind that he only then noticed that it was midnight dark outside. “I didn’t expect you to wake up so suddenly, like the drama queen you are, so I told them they could get some rest.”

“You told them, huh?” He asked and, even though he most definitely should’ve known better, gave Stentor a teasing grin at his authoritative tone. “How autocratic of you. Were you my gatekeeper, all the time I was asleep?”

He had meant it as an honest tease, nothing more than a way to lighten the strangely heavy atmosphere, but Stentor obviously didn’t take it that way. In the next moment he was on his feet, blinking at him in a slightly awkward way before turning on his heel and immediately heading towards the entrance of the tent. “I can go fetch them right now, if you like.”

It was such a sudden movement that it left him reeling. He frowned, and attempted to prop himself up on his elbows again as Stentor moved away from him. “I didn’t say-”

But it was no good. In the next moment Stentor was gone; leaving him alone in the tent, capable of doing nothing more than staring after him in confusion. 

\--

Stentor stuck to his promise, even though he hadn’t particularly wanted him to, and so it wasn’t long before the rest of his family came in. Kassandra punched him in the arm, his mater gave him a careful hug and Nikolaos hovered slightly awkwardly in the background with an expression on his face that left him in no doubt as to how relieved he was. It was all rather nice.

Or would’ve been rather nice, if Stentor - the person he probably wanted to talk to the most - hadn’t remained conspicuously absent.

But there was no point in getting worried! He was probably just busy, getting back into fearsome Spartan business after half a week spent guarding an unconscious lump. He settled back into his bed, talked with the rest of his family casually and tried his very hardest not to be hurt. Stentor would show himself again eventually, after all, it was only a matter of time.

But then night turned into day, and Stentor didn’t come back.

He convinced himself that there was no point in being hurt, that Stentor was probably still _extremely_ busy with whatever mysterious Spartan stuff seemed to occupy him most of the time, and focused on himself instead. With the help of his mater and Nikolaos he managed to sit up properly, and by the end of the day he was managing it himself. A small step, but what seemed like an extremely important one.

And then two days passed, and Stentor still didn’t come back.

He pretended that it was alright once again, although he couldn’t help but feel a little hurt that Stentor didn’t want to see him even after he had almost died, and kept attempting to focus on himself. Everybody, even Kassandra who was never one for any kind of restraint, kept telling him that he didn’t have to push himself, but he found himself surprisingly keen to. It was a lot of effort to even turn his legs in the bed, at first, but he persisted. By the end of the second day he was just about able to get to his feet… Only to be narrowly caught by Nikolaos when he proceeded to collapse two minutes later, granted, but it was still progress.

And then a week passed, and Stentor still didn’t come back.

It was getting towards the longest they’d gone without seeing each other since they’d started this strange thing between them, even when Stentor was sent off on maneuvers he tended to find some way to tag along, but he tried his very hardest not to think about that. After about a week he’d started walking again, and even though it took a frankly insane amount of effort he was still rather proud of himself. With the hovering help of Kassandra and Nikolaos, and under the stern eye of his mater, he managed to make it halfway back home. He had to be carried the rest of the way, after his legs almost gave out on him, but he was certain that if he just gave it a little more time he would be back to his usual levels of stamina.

And then two weeks passed, and Stentor still didn’t come back.

It was definitely the longest they’d gone without seeing each other since they’d started fucking now, and although he was still trying not to dwell on it he found his mind turning to the subject more and more every day. He continued to make progress, but while he was proud of it the entire thing felt a bit soured in the absence of the person he wanted to see the most. What was the point in being able to walk further and further, if he couldn’t meet Stentor at the end of it? What was the point in slowly regaining his climbing ability, if he couldn’t even see Stentor at a distance?

And then a _month_ passed, and Stentor still didn’t come back. Still kept avoiding him, like he would rather be anywhere else.

He could climb again now, despite his mater’s obvious disapproval, but it seemed sour. He could fight a little, despite the fact that Kassandra could beat him every time, but it seemed meaningless. He could pretend to be his usual light self, despite the fact that even Nikolaos seemed able to see right through him, but it was all a lie. He had never been a particularly jealous lover before, had fucked his way across the Greek world and never particularly begrudged most of his paramours moving on after a few nights of pleasure, but he felt decidedly hurt by Stentor’s refusal to engage with him; it was a canker, a scab in his mind that he couldn’t help picking at again and again.

He had the sinking feeling that something had gone badly, badly wrong between them. And the main problem was, he just didn’t know what.

\--

It all came to a head about a week after that, when he crested the hill to their house - which all of them had crammed into in a rather awkward joint living arrangement - and saw Stentor basically running in the opposite direction; as if he’d seen him from a distance, and was determined not to be in his company for even a moment.

He growled under his breath, and marched through the front door to find Kassandra sharpening her knives at the table. He flopped down besides her without a word, was mildly pleased when she didn’t startle or attack him, but instead simply sent him an unimpressed look. “Did you talk to you, then?”

“No,” Kassandra said, and went back to the far more important subject of her knives. “Not much, anyway. Mainly we just wrestled.”

“So sorry for not using the actual term,” he said, a great deal more snappishly than usual. He tried, in general, to remain fairly laid back; but this entire past month or so had his nerves on a knife’s edge. “He’ll actually spend any sort of time with you, then?”

“Obviously,” Kassandra snorted, and sent him a briefly amused sideways glance. She always had had a rather strange sense of humour. “You’re grumpy today. Is your wound hurting again?”

“Not really,” he said, and broadly meant it. It still ached a little, and he had to pace his activity in a way that he wasn’t used to at all, but overall he felt almost back to normal; he wasn’t quite sure where his miraculous healing abilities came from, but he supposed it didn’t really matter as long as they showed results. “More my brain.”

“Oh, boo hoo,” Kassandra said mockingly, and he really wasn’t sure why he’d expected otherwise. “Is baby sulky that _one person_ won’t fall to his knees and worship him every single time he enters a room?”

He glared. “Stentor hasn’t spoken to me for over a _month_ , Kassandra. To be exact: one month, four days and twelve hours.”

“So?” Kassandra asked, yet again supremely unconcerned by the emotions of literally anybody else in the world. “Not sure you’ve noticed, given your whole drama queen routine of late, but he’s not generally a very talkative man.”

“He’s usually better than this!” He protested, even though that was an unfortunately accurate assessment of Stentor’s general willingness to communicate. Suddenly he felt tired of everything; he put his elbow on the table, propped his forehead on his hand and closed his eyes for a long moment as he struggled to come to terms with his own confused mass of emotions. “I just thought that I meant something to him. That he’d actually be pleased that I didn’t die. That he’d actually want to spend time with me and make sure that I’m okay, instead of just running away like I don’t matter to him at all/”

If he’d expected any sympathy, he was going to the wrong person. Kassandra simply gave him an incredibly unimpressed look.

Hm, perhaps it was because he was revealing far more than he’d ever discussed with another person before. “In a platonic way, of course.”

“No, not of course,” Kassandra said flatly, and finally put her knife down. It should’ve been mildly reassuring, but the way she turned to him and pointed her finger was anything but. “I do have _eyes_ , big brother. Better eyes than you, it seems.”

He probably should’ve been expecting that, but that didn’t stop him from being shocked. “Uh.”

I’ve known that the two of you are fucking for months now, almost a year,” Kassandra said quite casually, only seeming to take pleasure from how much he boggled. “You’ve hardly been subtle, not in emotions or actions. If you didn’t want me to know, then you shouldn’t have done it out in public.”

That was a fair point, but he still felt faintly weak at the matter of fact way she’d stated it. “Does anybody else know?”

“In general? Probably, considering the way that you two have been carrying on,” Kassandra said, with a far too casual little shrug. “In our family? I don’t think so. At least, until you got injured. After that I think mat- Myrrine may well have figured it out. No worries, though; Nikolaos, as ever, is far slower on the uptake.”

“Why would they have figured it out when I got injured?” He asked, his mind racing as he tried to come to terms with all those revelations.

“Stentor was _terrified_ when you almost died,” Kassandra said softly, and when he looked at her he was startled to find that her face was actually solemn for once. “He’s usually fairly restrained when it comes to his emotions, but he lost all of that when he saw you collapse with a sword in your belly. He was downright feral on the battlefield afterwards, and didn’t calm down even when we’d managed to get you out. I was the one who had to get Myrrine and Nikolaos, I was the one who had to fetch endless wise women and doctors, I was the one who had to shoo off nosy onlookers. All he did, from the moment we saved you to the moment you woke up, was stay by your side and watch you.”

“ _Oh_ ,” he said, as the realization hit him like a gut punch. Stentor wasn’t dispassionate towards him, if anything Stentor cared rather too much. “He did all of that, for me?”

“Mm,” Kassandra said, and rolled her eyes. “It was very annoying.”

“But if that’s true…” He said, still struggling for understanding and knowing full well that Kassandra was unlikely to be willing to cheerfully give it to him. “Why is he acting so strangely now? Why is he avoiding me, like he can’t stand to be in my presence for even a moment?”

Kassandra gave him another look, like that was yet another entirely obvious thing. “How good is Stentor with emotions usually, Alexios?”

“...Ah.”

“The only emotion he’s truly comfortable with is rage, it’s one of the few things we have in common,” Kassandra said wisely, like she and Stentor didn’t have the most strangely harmonious relationship in the family after all this time. “It terrified him when you were hurt, not just because of the hurt - although that was admittedly a fairly big factor - but because I think it revealed rather more about himself than he knows how to deal with. He could move past this by being sensible and actually talking to you, but it’s far safer to run away and attempt to bury his head in the sand. It’s the one way not to get hurt.”

The thought of Stentor being so vulnerable sent a strange, tender feeling spreading through his chest. He tapped his fingers on the table, tried to breathe through it as he realized just how deep this went. “So what do I do to get him to stop doing that?”

Kassandra, as predicted, made a face. “I dunno, do I look like a relationship expert?”

“ _Kassandra_.”

“You’re at least as strong and fast as me, Alexios, you figure it out,” Kassandra said, and gave another little shrug as he thought the truth of that through. “He wants to stop running, underneath it all. You have to make him face that.”

Despite everything, it wasn’t the worst advice he’d ever received. He hesitated for a moment, and then gave a very small nod. “Thank you, Kassandra.”

“You can thank me by not fucking where I can see it anymore,” Kassandra said, perfectly deadpan, and returned to examining her knives with only the smallest smirk lurking around her lips. “That shit’s gross.”

\--

He was well used to dismissing a good ninety percent of what Kassandra said, but this time he hesitated for some reason. Maybe it was time he forced the issue, maybe it was time he actually went after what he wanted and forced Stentor to put his heart on the line for once and for all.

He picked a lazy summer afternoon; one where very few people were around besides Stentor, still stubbornly doing errands in the centre of town despite the heat. He watched from afar for most of the day, carefully tracking his movements and waiting until he was standing besides an appropriately easy to climb temple, and only then made a move; he stepped out behind him almost casually, tapped him on the shoulder in as unconcerned a way as he could. “Hello there.”

Stentor had been very careful to avoid him for about a month and a half now, and obviously hadn’t expected him to do anything about this. He spun around in shock, his eyes going wide as he took him in. “What-?”

But he gave him no chance to act, no chance to flee. He took advantage of Stentor’s shock, the fact that he was entirely off guard, to scoop him up and over his shoulder. And then he grabbed for the side of the temple, scaled it until they were sitting right on the roof and an easy route of escape was out.

“Alexios!” Stentor spluttered, and immediately grabbed for the ridge of the roof as he perched awkwardly up on one of the columns. “Are you a fucking idiot? What about your injury?”

“It’s pretty much healed,” he said casually, which wasn’t entirely the truth - his stomach had definitely started to throb from the exertion, and he half wondered if he was bleeding again - but that was besides the point. “As you’d know if you hadn’t been avoiding me.”

Stentor froze for a long moment, wide eyed at the accusation, and then attempted to summon a suitably grim expression. “I haven’t been avoiding you.”

“This is the longest conversation we’ve had in over a month,” he pointed out, and very slowly reached out to skate his finger along Stentor’s bare arm; an intimate gesture, one that was meant to remind him of all the many times that he’d touched him there before. “The longest physical contact, too.”

Stentor looked down at his hand with an unreadable expression, and hesitated for a long moment “...I wanted to make sure that you fully recovered.”

That was a weak excuse, even for somebody like Stentor who was never the most natural with language. He cocked an eyebrow sceptically. “Didn’t you think that I’d recover more quickly if somebody I cared about was there with me?”

Stentor refused to meet his eyes, which was both entirely expected and slightly discouraging. “You had Kassandra, and Myrrine, and-”

“That’s not what I meant, and you know it,” he said, a great deal snappier than he’d intended.

Stentor fell silent, and switched his gaze to staring down at the tiles of the roof. He sighed, removed his hand from Stentor’s arm and settled for staring at his forehead instead. They sat there in silence for a long few moments, Stentor lost in his thoughts and him so angry and despairing that he genuinely didn’t know what to do about it.

It was a shock, when Stentor eventually sighed and looked back up at him. Even more of a shock, when he swung his leg around so that he was straddling the roof instead of awkwardly clinging to the side of it. “I don’t know why you keep climbing these things, they’re really fucking uncomfortable.”

“Stentor…”

“And no, that’s not an attempt to change the subject. It’s just a way to build myself up to what I actually want to say.” Stentor hesitated for another long moment, his eyes sliding briefly away again. And then he squared his shoulders, forced himself to look at his face with a focus that put him intimately in mind of what Stentor was like on the battlefield. “You terrified me when you got stabbed.”

“I know,” he said, because he had both the evidence of his own eyes and Kassandra’s testimony there.

“I’ve never been that scared before,” Stentor said, and he was far too Spartan to fidget like a disobedient child but from the way he was biting the inside of his cheek he obviously desperately wanted to. “It’s not the-”

“Spartan way,” he finished, and couldn’t quite hold back a grin. “I know that too.”

Stentor rolled his eyes at him, but seemed a great deal more tentative than actually annoyed. Like he was still thinking things through, trying to find the best way to put it. “Seeing you there, lying on the ground with the kind of wound that I’ve seen kill many actual Spartan soldiers… It was one of the worst moments of my life. I thought that I was going to lose you. That I’d never get to fight with you again, or squabble with you again, or have you tease me to the point of madness ever again. That when I kissed you, just before we went out to battle, it would be our very last kiss.”

The emotion in Stentor’s voice was impossible to miss, a vibrant pain that left him wincing. He hesitated for a long moment, and then reached out a slow hand to gently press over his arm once again. “I’m sorry, Stentor.”

“You should be. Look what happens when you get distracted,” Stentor scolded, a brief attempt at levity, but soon went back to his usual solemn bearing. “It wasn’t just that that terrified me, though.”

“Oh?”

“We’ve never really defined our relationship, have we?” Stentor asked, very slowly and very hesitantly. As if he would’ve never broached the subject at all, had they not been sitting on top of a roof with very few viable escape routes. “I’ve been closer to you than any other human being, I’ve had your cock in my ass for Sparta’s sake, and yet we’ve never once defined what that meant to us. Whether it was stress relief, or just fooling around, or two people who liked each other exploring where a connection could go, or… More.”

He had never once expected Stentor to be the one to broach such a sensitive subject, had never even dared to dream of it. He sat there in slightly stunned silence, staring as he attempted to corral his thoughts into some semblance of order.

“I never really thought about it until I saw you lying there on the ground,” Stentor said, and he was still trying to sound vaguely casual but pure emotion thrummed right through his words. “But when I did I realised the truth quite suddenly. It’s not just stress relief for me, or fooling around, or even exploring a connection. It’s more, so much more. It’s been more probably since the first time you kissed me.”

“Stentor…” He had no idea what to say. He was very experienced with sleeping with people, had rather enjoyed it over the years, but he wasn’t sure that he’d even once felt so deeply for one of them as he did for the man sitting across from him. “We kind of kissed each other that first time, you know.”

Stentor glared at him, but strangely he seemed more hopeful than anything. “You decide to be a stickler for details _now_?”

“I didn’t mean it like _that_ ,” he said, cursing his customary flippancy even though Stentor didn’t seem actually annoyed by it, and reached out his hand once more to wrap firmly around Stentor’s wrist; just so he didn’t go anywhere, just so he didn’t leave him once again. “Did you really stay besides me in that tent the entire time I was asleep?”

“For all four days, six hours and forty three minutes you were in that bed,” Stentor confirmed, looking slightly awkward at his precision. He didn’t know why, he _loved_ that Stentor was so officious about the things that he truly cared for. “I slept there, I ate there, I drank there. I would’ve even pissed there, if Myrrine hadn’t just about convinced me to go outside the tent while she watched you for half a minute.”

“I don’t think anybody has ever gone to such lengths for me,” he said, and meant it. He had been alone for so long, even all of his lovers only there for the pleasure and never there for the pain.

“I realized that when you woke up, and that only made me all the more terrified,” Stentor said quite simply, his face twisting as if he was trying to come to terms with something big and unmanageable inside him. “Alexios… I’ve never been in love before.”

He hadn’t been expecting Stentor to actually _say_ it. He was stunned, so stunned that it took every bit of control he had not just to topple backwards off the temple in a dead faint. “Love isn’t a _bad_ thing, Stentor.”

“Yes, but I’m entirely convinced that I’m bad at it,” Stentor said, looking more nervous than he’d ever seen him before. “And if you’ve never been treated tenderly before… Then how is somebody like me supposed to make sure that you get what you deserve? I am a soldier; a grumpy, obsessive, churlish man who has absolutely no idea how to be affectionate even with those he truly cares for. What on earth am I supposed to do?”

He reached out, laid a gentle and slightly shaky finger on Stentor’s lips as he tried to come to terms with all of that. “Why don’t you let me decide that?”

Stentor only gave him a highly unimpressed look, and continued speaking around his finger. “When have I ever let you do that?”

“First time's the charm?” He tried optimistically, and kept talking before Stentor could do more than roll his eyes at him. “You are grumpy, and obsessive, and churlish to a degree that even Kassandra gets annoyed at sometimes. But you’re also loyal, and surprisingly kind, and always seem to know exactly what I need even before I do. So what if you’re not a natural at love? Your attempts are better than anything natural ever could be.”

Stentor didn’t say anything to that. Only stared at him with narrowed eyes, seeming somewhat taken aback by his passion.

“I mean, I’m not particularly great at love myself when you look at it. I’m feckless, and wild, and run into things without thinking all the angles through. I know I can be selfish, and thoughtless, and say things that I don’t mean when I’m annoyed. I’m not sure how I’m ever going to be able to be what _you_ need either.” He took in a deep breath, forced himself to keep meeting Stentor’s eyes even though he suddenly, passionately understood the urge to just run away. “But, despite all that, you still like me anyway-”

Stentor snorted, though his eyes remained glued to him. “Despite myself.”

“So why shouldn’t I love you too?” He pressed, keeping a firm hold on Stentor’s wrist. Knowing that, no matter how terrified he was, he meant every single word of what he was saying. “I’m not saying that it has to be the perfect relationship immediately, Stentor. I’m just saying that if the both of us like each other, if the both of us _love_ each other… Then what’s the harm in giving it a go?”

There was a long moment in which Stentor remained silent, in which he thought that Stentor really might just climb off the roof and return to happily ignoring him yet again. And then Stentor looked at him once more, and this time his heart was right there in his eyes. “You always were good at convincing people into terrible decisions.”

“Can it really be that terrible if love is involved?” He asked, giddy, and leaned forward before Stentor could make a probably sarcastic reply. They kissed there on the temple roof for anybody to see, and he had never once felt as happy as he did in that moment.


End file.
